Choice, choice words, collective action, and the ongoing cearch for a perfect meta-metaphor
Choice, choice words, collective action, and the ongoing cearch for a perfect meta-metaphor
Links, Ponders & Wonders 10.30.24 Edition
Today’s LP&W Contents
Citizens Collective For Democracy
The “C” word
What do you call those that blindly consume all that is offered?
If they can do it, why can’t we?
So many unmade films!
The ongoing search for The Perfect Metaphor
It’s a metaphor AND almost A Unifying Theory Of Everything
America’s greatest film festival, expanded
Cinema images, explained
Good ideas, continued
1
Watch Vanessa’s latest film now!
No, no, no. This is not another plug for INVISIBLE NATION (but you can watch that too if you get tickets here for 11/7 at UCLA at 730 PM or elsewhere here on 11/11). THIS is a plug for super inspiring short she and the Citizens Collective For Democracy did and just released to get out the vote. Check it out on her newsletter. It is pretty great.
2
The rant we need right now
In some ways that is the title of every post I write over my morning coffee. It is how I like to start my day…. sometimes. What is it that pisses me off most right now? I have several friends who write these sort of texts to me regularly, as they know they will find a sympathetic ear. If I tallied them up, and since most of my friends are still in the entertainment business, the clear #1 has been the word “content”, and driven primarily about how it devalues the very thing they have devoted their hearts and minds to for decades.
Lucky for them, Alex Berg has written the rant, um, post that they needed. It also reminds me that I should just publish my work in progress (and likely to never be completed) list of all the phrases we need to retire post-haste.
3
If we are cancelling some phrases, can we add in new ones?
One of the joys of examining other nations to shoot your films in, are the different terms they have for the tools we all use. While examining Ireland as a home for upcoming film, I was delighted by the word “Gully Sucker”. I’ve met more than a few folk I would have classified as such. Here’s to new ways to curse those just devour whatever is in front of them
4
Why go elsewhere? Because they do things America won’t. .. like support FKAIndie film.
What if someone offered you 53% of your first film’s budget, up to a budget of $15M, and it was on damn good terms. Yeah, soft money! Would you take it? What if you were an investor, wouldn’t you match it? What if that initial offer was from an overseas entity, would you relocate? Well the UK does that for their independent filmmakers.
https://deadline.com/2024/10/independent-film-tax-credit-uk-passed-law-2024-bfi-1236110177/
More details are here:
https://www.saffery.com/insights/articles/independent-film-tax-credit-iftc/
(HT Mynette Louie)
No wonder Ireland is upping their credit from 32% to 40% for their lower budgeted films.
And you wonder why production is fleeing California? Well, Gavin FINALLY figured it out, and is going to try to improve ours. You’d think in a state that is synonymous with our Industry, it wouldn’t have taken so long…
5
All the projects I will never make
Like the aforementioned, there are quite few, but I’ve never quite got around to building the list. Maybe now I have a reason to do it. I have long thought “unmade movies” was a newsletter or podcast unto itself. I even once had a deal (almost) to get it made as a podcast, but alas, executives moved on. Now someone is doing it, sort of, and in text form. But, if you ask me, the almost made projects are always the best — they haven’t been compromised by the system yet… or at least quite as much.
https://www.vulture.com/2013/02/the-lost-projects-of-michael-odonoghue.html
6
See… some things do get better!
There’s a metaphor in this. It could be for what was FKATheFilmBiz…. but that would require that we had taken the other path. Just like The Evil Geniuses out strategized the Democrats, we who love art, authorship, and culture, better start acting like the apple farmers, but beyond just advancing the taste of our pursuit, we also have to advance the way folks find, enjoy, and remark on the fruit.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/apples-have-never-tasted-so-delicious-heres-why/
7
Ooze, like the octopi do — or why is everyone so stupid in comparison to our 8 armed friends?!
I find Unifying Theories On Everything, virtually irresistible — but of course never correct. There’s a joke in there I am still trying to find. Perhaps though the search for The Perfect Metaphor wins in what is a greater magnet for me. The fact that octopuses can hit in both fields simultaneously is more than a bonus or a delight, but yeah, it’s both/and.
8
Felt it then, feel it now; ready to take the vow?
Say it with me: October is the best American Film Festival.
Granted this year, I only got to Middleburg, but it only increased my hunger. Last year, when we started out at Woodstock, we immediately got hit with Covid. It knocked us out for a few, but we got back on the horse. This year I caught a cold. Still have it. I am missing out on the festival for the Privileged Los Angelian Filmworker known as Award Season. Yup, even if AFI wasn’t happening now, we’d still have a film a night, always free, often with snacks and drinks, trying to buy our vote. As absurd and somewhat corrupt as it feels, it is still pretty delightful.
Academy members win again too, with Academy Screening Room streaming portal. From October through May I don’t really feel the need for other services as there is a never-ending bounty of titles I want to see, albeit I generally always prefer to see it on the big screen — but the Academy portal also brings me some of the WORST films of the year that Studios spent significantly on. These too are a delight for me. I love wondering how they got made, even when the answers are all to easy (stars or trending topics).
But mostly the thrill is for finding the overlooked movies that got drowned by the abundance of work and the failure of our release strategies. It is a tragedy. These films do surface at festivals first, often generating buzz, but the push to go to streaming combined with limited acess (and lack of ease) to screens undermines their connection with an audience.
But every time I read a proclamation declaring love and delight — like this one — for a regional festival, I get a bit of that ‘ol pitter patter. Seeing movies on a giant screen in the dark in a room full of strangers — particularly a film you know little about but love when you see it — is what it is all about.
9
Those pictures of American Arthouses?
Yeah, I’ve been using photos of the members of the Arthouse Convergence to illustrate the LP&Ws, in hopes the photos might inspire greater support of them. Without a healthy and vibrant coalition of exhibitors, we will never have a non-dependent cinema ecosystem that prioritizes the artists. We are all in this together.
https://www.arthouseconvergence.org/organizational-members
10
Good Ideas: Visiting Artist Residency Database & Placement Agency
On Sunday’s I’ve been posting online only a series of Good Ideas from prior posts, ultimately so I can link to them as one-offs. But consequently, they don’t end up in your in-box, so here you go:
Re: your number 5, "All the projects I will never make":
I'm simultaneously haunted and driven by this quote from W. H. Auden: "God may reduce you on Judgment Day to tears of shame, reciting by heart the poems you would have written, had your life been good."
I’d like to also retire the use of “consume” as in “consuming content.” Just so many bad “C” words!